Whatever remains
A poem about deep time for the new year
Hello, dear subscribers! I have a little gift for you, this new 2025. It’s been a hard holiday season in a lot of ways—losing Xochi has been brutal, though I’ve also had so much joy being with the other dogs again and back on my beloved cerro. This place feels like home to me in a way that’s hard to describe, perhaps because I’ve never really had a home before, or even dreamed of it.
This poem that I wrote as one of the rewards for the Kickstarter for the Tanith Lee anthology Storyteller feels like a response to so much of the pain and uncertainty that we’re all feeling at this moment. I’ve become really fascinated by deep time, recently. I’m trying to find ways to get my brain to encompass just how old this planet is, and how old life is—just how much has come before us, and how much will come after. I’m not trying to subsume the importance of what we do to one another right now in this micro-moment of our lives, but to find a connection between this moment and every other one that will come out of it.
Jeremy Brett, the SF & Fantasy collection curator at the Texas A&M Cushing Memorial Library, was kind enough to support the Kickstarter and purchase one of my rewards: a poem or flash piece based on a prompt of his choosing. The prompt he chose (naturally enough, given both of our interests) was “library.” That collided with all of my thoughts about the Cambrian explosion and my hill and mass extinction events and what it means to love, and this is what came out. I hope you enjoy!
Alaya